Simon Seagrave

For teams running virtualization estates of any size today, three pressures are converging at once. Hardware budgets that looked generous in late 2024 have been blindsided by memory costs, turning routine refreshes into financial hurdles. Licensing models have moved in directions most renewal cycles weren't built to absorb.

Next week, thousands of IT leaders will gather in Atlanta for Red Hat Summit. The agenda covers everything from AI to digital sovereignty, but in the customer conversations I have continued to have over the past 24 months, a different topic keeps coming up: whether the virtualization platform they've been running for years and depend on is still the right foundation for their workloads today, and whether it sets them up for what's coming next. Most of them are already evaluating alternatives..

Disruption in the virtualization market has not slowed down. The fallout from industry licensing and packaging changes continues to push organizations into decisions they were not planning to make this year, and for many, the timelines are getting shorter, not longer. Over the past 12 months, we have worked with hundreds of organizations navigating exactly this situation, and at Red Hat Summit 2026 (May 11–14, Atlanta), many of them will share what they have learned.